The Daily UbuntuThread 04 · Climate and Our Relationship to the Land · September 25, 2026
A'se'k, the harbour given back to the sea
For 53 years, a mill discharged its wastewater into a Mi'kmaw estuary; the community won an end to the discharges and a major cleanup.
1 · The scene
On the beach of a village in Gaspésie, a teenage girl asks her grandmother why no one swims in the cove. "Everyone used to come here," she answers, pointing to the murky water near the old pipe.
The following Saturday, some twenty neighbours arrive with gloves and bags. No one has signed a contract. They pick up, they laugh, they tell each other about summers long ago. The girl understands that a beach is something you look after together.
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
Boat Harbour and Pictou Landing
A'se'k, which maps call Boat Harbour, was a tidal estuary next to the Mi'kmaw Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia. In the mid-1960s, the community was assured that the water would stay clear despite the discharges. From 1967, wastewater from a pulp mill was piped there, up to 90 million litres a day. According to community members, the water quickly turned brown and foul-smelling, and the fish died.
The community never stopped defending its estuary. After a pipe ruptured in June 2014, releasing 47 million litres of effluent, people mobilized together. In 2015, Nova Scotia passed the Boat Harbour Act, which set a closing date. On January 31, 2020, after 53 years, the treatment facility stopped receiving the discharges.
The cleanup now aims to restore A'se'k to its shape as a tidal estuary. The budget is estimated at $460 million, $100 million of it federal, and the federal environment minister approved the project on January 24, 2025. Here, repair does not come from above: it was born of a community that refused to forget what the water had been.
3 · The voice
“We are rights holders, not stakeholders.”
4 · The question
Which stretch of water or land from your childhood would you like to give back to those who will come after, and with whom would you begin?
Sources
- Build Nova Scotia, Boat Harbour project page, consulted September 2026. buildns.ca
- APTN News, "After 50 years, Pictou Landing First Nation is getting its harbour back," February 4, 2019. www.aptnnews.ca
- CBC Docs POV, "For 50+ years, pulp mill waste has contaminated Pictou Landing First Nation's land in Nova Scotia," consulted September 2026. www.cbc.ca
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
Tags
Read also
A law to name what we breathe
Since 2024, a federal law has required Canada to study environmental racism and build a national strategy, expected in the fall of 2026.
ReadBreathing next to Chemical Valley
In 2024, benzene spikes led Aamjiwnaang, near Sarnia, to declare a state of emergency, then to a pilot project against environmental racism.
ReadEnvironmental racism, right here
Who breathes the smoke, who lives next to the dump? Environmental racism raises the question of "us" on the scale of a whole territory.
Read